


anchor

by elliptical



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Canon Expansion, Kissing, M/M, Mild D/s, character exploration, not quite sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-04
Updated: 2017-07-04
Packaged: 2018-11-23 08:00:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11398395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elliptical/pseuds/elliptical
Summary: "They were both hungry animals, but Adam had been starving longer."





	anchor

**Author's Note:**

  * For [muchlessvermillion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/muchlessvermillion/gifts).



> GUESS WHO FINISHED REREADING THE RAVEN CYCLE.  
> guess who appreciates the brevity of adam and ronan's Scene but also wants like a million more words of it  
> shoutout to maggie stiefvater's writing for always making me want to write, and maggie stiefvater's characters for making me also want to write

Their bodies were electric.

Ronan’s fingers came up to Adam’s hair, stroked through the curls, paused. Their mouths were flame against each other, twin pyres surging to inferno, heat trapped where their chests pressed together. Ronan’s fingers searched, seeking a grip, a lifeline, anything to slow the spark-on-gasoline desperation between them. But the hesitation was enough to speak an entire conversation. Ronan wanted a lifeline, but to pull on Adam’s hair, to make an action of passion into something potentially violent -

Adam made a sound that was painfully close to a whine, an animal hiding a wound. There were so many unhealed edges still inside him, so much broken glass strewn across the floor of himself. He was here, with Ronan, incontrovertibly present - and yet he was sinking, the doubts creeping up his spine, a litany of worried obsession. His body begged for satiation, and his mind whispered, _You cannot survive if you lose this now._

But Adam had survived more impossible pains. His heart was an anxious bird fluttering against caging ribs. He had spent so much time avoiding pain, looking straight ahead, not blinking, clawing his way from the pit he’d been born into. He had spent so much time tired, and awake, and in the foggy space between. He had spent so much time learning the vast spread of himself, an ocean of contradiction; and here was Ronan, who knew him inside and out, pulling him back to the present. Or maybe Ronan was pulling Ronan back to the present.

Adam was here, in this moment. _Outside,_ Persephone would say, and he needed to be outside. He was familiar with the need to exist outside himself, to watch events unfold like an observer. He was less versed in the poetry of this - the way his nerves crackled, the way his stomach clenched, the way his edges charred and blackened and smoldered into ash. He had been awake for long enough that exhaustion was a half-remembered dream, but this was a new precipice. This was life, distilled and breathed into him from Ronan’s lungs. The dreamer and the magician. Infinity. Everything and nothing at all between them.

They needed to be closer. Adam needed to be closer. Ronan would not pull on his hair, and Ronan had no hair to pull, so Adam slid his hands underneath the fabric of Ronan’s shirt. Dug his nails into the tattoo-spread skin. It was a challenge, an answer to an unasked question, a bitten-off cry. Adam let his fingertips roam over Ronan’s back and ribs and chest, their mouths still moving against each other, like they were underwater and needed to share the same air. Flame, ocean.

Ronan made a feral sound, a wolf’s cry, savage and unrestrained. There was an undercurrent to it, a less certain layer. It was a strange thought that Ronan was uncertain when all of Adam felt naked. They were both so hungry. Ronan needed Adam’s validation with a ferocity that only rivaled Adam’s own. Here was twin worry, fears prised apart like exposed nerves and then cast aside as so much unnecessary clothing. Here they both were, magician and dreamer, each knowing the other and each terrified of being misunderstood.

The seconds, half seconds, nanoseconds, stretched to infinity. Magic lived. Half-dreamt insects hummed in the grass, the three deer watched, and only ragged breathing punctuated the stillness. The air was charged. Incoming thunderstorm.

Ronan wrapped his arms around Adam, cradling the back of his neck. Their tongues met, sliding against each other, wet and altogether not erotic at all. The taut threads broke, and then they were laughing, breathless and dizzy and still kissing. A pair of teenage boys holding each other on a porch. The need for clarity let Adam gather himself just enough to speak.

“Is this-” he started, but he didn’t know how to finish the sentence. _Okay? Good? The right thing to do?_

Ronan leaned his forehead against Adam’s, cupped his face in his hands. His furrowed brow belonged to a captain lost at sea, a ship unmoored. “Is it not-?” he began, and then broke off, as if belatedly remembering that he needed to posture and grimace and keep the mask in place for always.

Adam shook off the feeling that he was doing something wrong. Instead he shut his eyes and squeezed Ronan around the middle and pushed out the crowding thoughts. His mind was so noisy for such a desolate place. He needed to carve a place of quiet.

Ronan made his mind so quiet.

There were a million questions he should ask, none that would shape themselves correctly. How to be sure not to ruin something when he walked on the edge of a blade? They’d crossed over from whatever had been to whatever was now, but they’d been here for a long time. There was nowhere to go but forward. It was frightening, exhilarating, wonderful.

“I want this,” Adam said finally, because he wouldn’t lie and he wouldn’t be a version of himself he’d buried. “Do you want this?”

Ronan nodded once, brushed his fingers through Adam’s hair again. This time it wasn’t a searching gesture. He wasn’t seeking an anchor; his fingertips rubbed gently against Adam’s scalp, memorized the shape of his curls. The tenderness made Adam feel like he was going to burst. It was an emotion so big it couldn’t be held inside his chest; it tickled the base of his throat, the bottom of his lungs, so sharp it neared pain.

He kissed Ronan, the brush of stubble on stubble and hot breath intermingling. But this time he put intent behind it - just a little slower, just a little more careful. It was all he could do to keep himself together. If he didn’t have Ronan to hold onto, he was sure he would shatter, but the open terror of the moment was mitigated by the fact that Ronan clearly felt the same. Adam kissed with all the earnestness found in Ronan’s careful fingers. It was a continued conversation, a blooming hope. _I know you don’t need me to be gentle, but I know you are fragile, and I do not want to break this thing between us._

Ronan pressed him against the porch railing, slid a knee between his legs. White light burst behind Adam’s eyes. He caught a snatch of moss-scented air, vines curled around his body, petals bursting open. He was a cacophony of light, sound, breath.

He made a noise, he must have made a noise - Ronan moved his knee higher. Adam was here, suddenly, more than he'd been before. He was wrapped into his heart and brain and every live-wire nerve ending. His body thrummed with pleasure, a cocoon of warmth. It was the base instincts responding to touch, yes, but it was also his whole self crying out as pain he’d never quite registered eased. Here he was, Adam Parrish, survival in motion. And here was Ronan Lynch making a protective cage from his arms, holding him tight, both the ship and the tether keeping it docked. Here they were, safe, safe, safe, and in a blinding moment of clarity, Adam thought, _I have needed this all my life._

Not Ronan painted as a savior, a knight saving a damsel. But the closeness itself, the assurance in the touch, the promise. _I want to be here. I will not leave. I want you to be safe. I love you._

_I love you. I love you._

And Adam knew, in that same intrinsic place where he interpreted Cabeswater's needs, that Ronan was drawing him out on purpose. That Ronan could tell Adam was retreating, and that Ronan would go after him, tug him back. As long as it took.

Adam had only just learned to be present, to feel what his hands touched. He’d be damned if he couldn’t answer Ronan’s promises with his own.

He pressed his hips forward, caught his hands on Ronan’s shirt, pulled. He listened to the hitch of Ronan’s breath and moved his hips again, a slower circle, more deliberate than desperate. They were under the porch in the hazy orange light and Ronan said, “Parrish, fuck-” and Adam said, “Let’s go in,” and then added, “so we don’t get eaten alive by mosquitoes,” because it was the kind of perfunctory excuse the situation warranted. Like calling non-coincidences coincidence.

The actual movement inside was a blur of deprivation. Neither wanted to let go of the other, but neither wanted to trip over the other and fall flat on their face either, so a compromise was reached. They separated and moved as quickly as possible, and Adam felt the lack of touch as real pain. The edge of desire seemed liable to kill him.

Ronan consolidated his time, yanking his shirt off as he walked. Adam followed his lead. It would have been proper to head into one of the bedrooms, to lay down on a real mattress, but it was too much. They collapsed onto the closest soft surface, their bodies falling together like stars pulled by the other's gravity. Ronan - fierce, guarded, desperate Ronan - held Adam against his chest and shuddered and keened.

In another flash of clarity, Adam understood something about Ronan Lynch, an essential piece of the puzzle. As worried as Adam was about the future, the present, meanings and questions and ramifications; as worried as Adam was, Ronan was at least as terrified. Ronan was a study in vulnerability. He tilted his head back, exposing his throat, all submission and want and unspoken question. If Adam stopped now, Ronan might break.

There was so much between them.

Adam didn’t stop. He kissed over Ronan’s jaw and cheek and the shell of his ear. He sucked at the soft space where Ronan’s pulse beat; he left shadows of his lips over Ronan’s shoulders and collarbone. He wanted, wanted, wanted, and it was more than physical wanting, more than base desire. He wanted Ronan here with him, wanted this to be good, wanted them both to be urgently present in this moment, always. He wanted the continued promise that it was okay. He was a victim of desert dehydration just remembering what water tasted like.

Ronan gave up control so easily. It had always been brewing beneath the surface, this desire to let someone else take the reins. Adam left marks with his mouth, his fingers, but he never bit hard enough to bruise. That was a promise to himself more than anything. Ronan shivered, alive and flayed and begging for anything Adam would give him. Adam dropped his forehead to rest against Ronan’s shoulder and felt sweat trickle down his temple. There was so much he wanted. He wanted Ronan to twist under him and arch and cry out, but there was time for that yet. There was a future. This time, the first time, he kept the want from edging into shadowed territory. _I know you would give me anything, and I know you like pain, but I will not make this moment violent._

Ronan was still shivering under him. Adam had been studiously ignoring the lower half of his body during his mouth’s explorations, but that was getting difficult with the unbridled hitching of Ronan’s hips. Adam straddled him, pressed him firmly down against the couch. Ronan responded to being pinned with a string of profanity so broken-up that Adam was pretty sure he couldn’t hear a word he was saying. Adam pressed his hips down again, experimental, and Ronan’s breath pitched upward and he breathed, “ _Please._ ”

Adam decided he liked this.

There were practicalities to consider, though. Adam had not exactly envisioned this happening tonight of all nights. Or ever. He kissed his way back up Ronan’s neck and said, “Do you have anything?”

Ronan wriggled under him, less to tease than to access his pockets. He pulled out a wrapped square.

Adam couldn’t resist. “So can you dream one hundred percent effective protection, or are we stuck with ninety-nine point nine?”

Ronan sighed and turned his gaze heavenward. “That point-one percent will get you every time.”

“Fuck,” Adam said after a moment. “I don’t have - uh, do you have anything - uh, do you have lube?”

Ronan’s face was caught somewhere between wicked amusement and exasperation. “Yes, Parrish. I’ve been carrying a bottle of Slippery Stuff in my pocket on the off chance we’d bump butts.”

Adam did not point out that Ronan _had_ had a possibly-dreamed condom in his pocket, or that the fact that knowing a brand name was a sign that he probably had lube _somewhere._ Instead he sighed as theatrically as he could manage. “Blue will have a fit if we don’t practice safe sex.”

“I cannot believe,” Ronan said, “that you are thinking about Blue right now.”

“Also,” Adam pointed out, reasonably, “it would hurt. Without lube.”

Ronan looked just on the brink of saying something about not minding if it hurt. Wanting it to hurt, maybe. Then he bit his tongue and made a face instead.

“I think,” Adam continued solemnly, “it is not in the cards tonight.”

The corner of Ronan’s mouth twitched. His expression cracked, and he started to laugh, and Adam laughed with him, and the friction did weird things to their hips, so that Ronan’s voice choked off on a gasp and Adam had to brace his elbows against the couch to hold himself upright.

“We can…” Ronan trailed off, all the uncertainty he normally fought to keep at bay playing over his face. “We can just - stay like this? If you want.”

Adam heard the undercurrent more clearly than if he’d spoken aloud. _Did I get it right is this okay did I misinterpret do you want me is it just sex is it something more are we something else did I get it right did I get it right did I get it right_

Adam shifted his hips to relieve some of the physical pressure between them. He slid like liquid into the space between Ronan’s body and the back of the couch, settling down. His arm curled over Ronan’s waist. It was an anchor. They’d both reached the shore.

It was a good moment to say _I love you._ Adam brushed his knuckles featherlight over Ronan’s cheekbone. Ronan’s eyelashes fluttered, cast shadows over his face.

“We can stay like this,” he said, and a smile spread over Ronan’s face with the slow sureness of molten lava. “We’ve got all the time in the world.”


End file.
